The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 45, No. 2 - 75

Entry-Level Professionals' Proficiency with Helping Skills

skills. The researchers were interested in master's level only because entry-level residence
life positions typically require a bachelor's or
master's degree rather than a terminal degree.
This yielded information from a total of 290
schools.
To answer the second question, the researchers designed a descriptive online survey
to capture the perceptions of SHOs in the
Upper Midwest Region-Association of College
and University Housing Officers (UMRACUHO). This region includes the states
of North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska,
Kansas, Missouri, Iowa, Minnesota, and Wisconsin and the Canadian province of Manitoba.
This region was chosen due to the familiarity
of the researchers with the region, in addition
to the varied educational backgrounds of entrylevel professionals in this region. While some
researchers believe that generalizations can be
made from qualitative studies, the majority of
qualitative researchers agree that the goal of
qualitative research does not allow for generalization (Onwuegbuzie & Leech, 2010, p. 883).
The researchers felt that it would be appropriate to survey SHOs in UMR-ACUHO, as the
varied educational backgrounds would provide
a cross-section of educational preparation from
across the country. Given that the researchers
sought to gather the perceptions of SHOs for
descriptive analysis only, an expedited development and validation procedure was appropriate
(Zumbo & Chan, 2014). The authors developed
the following survey questions.
* Do you require entry-level housing
professionals (one to four years in the field)
to have a master's degree?

entry-level housing professionals required
to handle that involve the use of helping
skills?
* What skills are you not seeing in your entrylevel housing professionals that they should
have had prior to taking the position?
* Is there any other information on this topic
that you feel is important?
An assumption was made on the part of the
researchers that the entry-level housing professionals were full-time and not graduate assistants. Demographics included campus size,
type of institution (private/public, two-year
or four-year), number of entry-level housing
professionals on their campus, and the institutions from where their entry-level professionals came. Finally, the participants were
asked to rate eight helping skills in terms of
how important they are for entry-level housing
professionals to successfully complete the responsibilities of their position. These skills
include microskills/active listening skills, nonverbal and attending skills, multicultural competence, intervention/action, challenging and
confronting, crisis intervention and management, conflict management/mediation, and
interpersonal skills. These were chosen from
the list of skills mentioned in Reynolds (2011)
and Burkard, Cole, Ott, and Stoflet (2005)
based on their applicability to the entry-level
housing professional role.
An email invitation was sent to 117 individuals identified as a campus's SHO, as listed on
the UMR-ACUHO region's website. A followup invitation was sent nine days after the original request, with the survey being open for a
full two weeks.

* What situations are you seeing your

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The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 45, No. 2

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